Republicans ‘grasping at straws’ over emails — Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says the hubbub over whether she had secret emails on her server is “very much like Benghazi,” a politically motivated scandal that’s likely not as serious as Republicans suggest.

Clinton tells ABC’s “This Week” that “it’s pretty clear” that Republicans are “grasping at straws” in their response to the latest release of emails from Clinton’s private home server. The State Department announced it’s withholding some of those emails because the information they contain is too highly classified. The former secretary of state says she’s been told some of that email correspondence included a public newspaper article. Clinton insists she never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time. She repeats her call for the emails’ release.

As secretary of state, Clinton presided over a key piece of the government’s response to the deadly 2012 assaults on a diplomatic compound and CIA quarters in Benghazi, Libya. The attacks killed four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya, and quickly became a political rallying cry for Republicans.

— AP